Category: z-Exclude

“Following a complaint, an investigation was opened in December 2022 into deceptive marketing practices and programmed obsolescence,” the office said in a statement on Monday, adding that the complaint was filed by an activist group called ‘Halte a L’Obsolescence Programmee’ (HOP).  The group’s complaint centers around the practice of ‘serialization’, whereby spare parts like microchips or speakers are matched with serial numbers to a specific generation of iPhone. This prevents third-party repairers from using generic parts, and as models are phased out by Apple, so too are the associated spares, forcing customers to shell out for a newer model.

Pharmacy services provider PharMerica has disclosed a massive data breach impacting over 5.8 million patients, exposing their medical data to hackers.

PharMerica is a pharmacy services provider in 50 U.S. states, operating 180 local and 70,000 backup pharmacies, and serving 3,100 medical facilities nationwide.

According to a data breach notification submitted to the Office of the Maine Attorney General, hackers breached PharMerica’s system on March 12th, 2023, stealing the full names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers (SSNs), medications, and health insurance information of 5,815,591 people.

The firm discovered the intrusion on March 14th, 2023, and its investigation determined on March 21st that client data had been stolen. However, notices of a data breach were sent to impacted individuals only last Friday, May 12th, 2023.

airBaltic, Latvia’s flag carrier has acknowledged that a ‘technical error’ exposed reservation details of some of its passengers to other airBaltic passengers. Passengers also reported receiving unexpected emails which addressed them by the name of another customer. The Riga-based airline, incorporated as AS Air Baltic Corporation operates flights to 80 destinations and is 97% government-owned. Although the air carrier says the…

BERLIN – The German security authorities believe that China is still conducting police activities on German soil even though Beijing assured Berlin in February that it had ceased to do so, the German foreign and interior ministries said on Monday.

“The security authorities continue to assume that there are two so-called overseas police stations in Germany,” a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said at a regular press conference.

Berlin called on Beijing in November to shut down extraterritorial police stations in the country.

President López Obrador made the sale of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner one of his campaign promises, calling it a symbol of previous governments’ excesses. But the specially-outfitted plane proved hard to shift and an attempt to raffle it off failed. It was finally sold to the Tajik government for $92m (£73.7m).

The jet took off from California, where it had been in storage, and arrived in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, early on Monday. The plane was originally purchased in 2012 by the president at the time, Felipe Calderón, for $218m (£175m). It was then used by Mr Calderón’s successor, Enrique Peña Nieto. Mr López Obrador vowed to never set foot in it. He has been using commercial flights since he took office.

CAIRO (AP) — Sudan’s military chief has ordered the freezing of all bank accounts belonging to a rival paramilitary force. The two sides have battled for weeks across Sudan, pushing the troubled country to the brink of all-out war.

The decree, issued on Sunday by Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, will target the official accounts of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudanese bank, as well as the accounts of all companies belonging to the group, the state news agency SUNA reported.

It remains unclear what immediate effect the freezing would have on the RSF and how Burhan’s orders are to be enforced.

The military chief also announced the replacement of the governor of Sudan’s Central Bank, a move likely tied to the freezing decree. Over the past decade, the RSF amassed great wealth through the gradual acquisition of Sudanese financial institutions and gold reserves.

In an article on Sunday, Politico quoted an anonymous official from Macron’s office as saying that “what Ukraine needs is combat equipment, armored vehicles, tanks, artillery.” In addition, Paris will heed Kiev’s calls to supply more air defense systems, the source stated.

When asked whether France was considering sending fighter jets to Ukraine, the official dismissed the issue as “a bit premature,” stressing that the focus should currently be on land operations and air defense.

Biden will visit the city for the G-7 summit, where he and other world leaders will focus on a range of issues, including Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, climate change, and the global economy.

But Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who represents Hiroshima in Japan’s legislature, has said he hopes the setting of the summit will bring a focus to the danger of nuclear weapons. And in that setting, the leader of the country who carried out the bombing will inevitably play an outsized role in any events commemorating it.

The Philadelphia Inquirer experienced the most significant disruption to its operations in 27 years due to what the newspaper calls a cyberattack.

The company was working to restore print operations after a cyber incursion that prevented the printing of the newspaper’s Sunday print edition, the Inquirer reported on its website. The news operation’s website was still operational Sunday, although updates were slower than normal, the Inquirer reported.

Inquirer publisher Lisa Hughes said Sunday “we are currently unable to provide an exact time line” for full restoration of the paper’s systems. 

HONG KONG – Fierce competition for new mortgage customers is driving banks in Hong Kong to offer the highest cash rebates in nearly two decades.

The deals – offered as a percentage of the principal loan amount – ramped up from about 1.3 per cent last year to as much as 2.6 per cent currently, the highest in over 17 years, according to Centaline Mortgage Broker data.

Banks such as HSBC Holdings and Bank of China (Hong Kong) are using the incentive as a way to draw in clients, while property transactions remain subdued in the city’s real estate market that’s still reeling from an exodus of residents last year amid its zero Covid policy. Lenders are also getting squeezed as a cap on lending rates in the city crimps margins.

WASHINGTON/BERLIN – Leaders of the Group of Seven (G-7) nations plan to tighten sanctions on Russia at their summit in Japan this week, with steps aimed at energy and exports aiding Moscow’s war effort, said officials with direct knowledge of the discussions.

New measures announced by the leaders during the May 19-21 meetings will target sanctions evasion involving third countries, and seek to undermine Russia’s future energy production and curb trade that supports Russia’s military, the people said.

Separately, US officials also expect G-7 members will agree to adjust their approach to sanctions so that, at least for certain categories of goods, all exports are automatically banned unless they are on a list of approved items.

WASHINGTON – Google, a unit of Alphabet, has agreed to pay US$8 million (S$10.7 million) to settle claims it used deceptive advertisements to promote the Pixel 4 smartphone, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced on Friday.

The search and advertising giant, which also makes Android smartphone software and owns YouTube, has been scrutinised for antitrust and consumer protection infractions by both the federal government and state attorneys general. The federal government has filed two antitrust lawsuits.

In this instance, Paxton’s office alleged that Google hired radio announcers to give testimonials about the Pixel 4 even though the company had refused to allow them to use one of the phones.

“If Google is going to advertise in Texas, their statements better be true,” Paxton said in a statement. “In this case, the company made statements that were blatantly false, and our settlement holds Google accountable for lying to Texans for financial gain.”

ANKARA, Turkey — The price tag for Turkey’s TF-X fighter jet could be more than previously expected, according to the head of its manufacturer. Temel Kotil, who serves as CEO for Turkish Aerospace Industries, said in March 2021 during a TV interview that a single TF-X would be $100 million per unit. But this week, Kotil said that unit price…

The European Union’s top court has handed down a couple of notable rulings today in the arena of data protection. One (Case C-300/21) deals with compensation for breaches of the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR); and the second (Case C-487/21) clarifies the nature of information that individuals exercising GDPR rights to obtain a copy of data held on them…

Fully backed by the Labor government, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) board yesterday resumed aggressively raising interest rates. It is deliberately inflicting more suffering on working-class households in order to further cut real wages and consumer spending.

Building workers walk past Reserve Bank of Australia in Sydney, Nov. 1, 2022. [AP Photo/Rick Rycroft]
In announcing its decision to raise its cash rate from 3.6 percent to 3.85 percent, the RBA explicitly targeted wages—which have already been cut 4.5 percent in real terms over the past year. It said this level of “wages growth” was consistent with the bank’s inflation target, but it would continue to “pay close attention” to labour costs.

Real wages had fallen, RBA governor Philip Lowe told an RBA Board Dinner brimming with business leaders in Perth last night, but if inflation continued “workers will seek larger pay rises.” He said the “labour market” was “still very tight.” Therefore, the RBA was determined to pursue its course, “even if it is difficult for some people in the short term.”

The United States on Wednesday approved the world’s first vaccine for the Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), the culmination of a decades-long hunt to protect vulnerable people from the common illness.

Drugmaker GSK’s Arexvy was green-lighted for adults aged 60 and older, with similar shots from other makers including Pfizer and Moderna expected to follow soon.

“Today’s approval of the first RSV vaccine is an important public health achievement to prevent a disease which can be life-threatening,” said senior United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official Peter Marks in a statement.

The decision “marks a turning point in our effort to reduce the significant burden of RSV,” added Mr Tony Wood, GSK’s chief scientific officer.

RSV is a common virus that normally causes mild, cold-like symptoms, but can be serious for infants and the elderly, as well as those with weak immune systems and underlying conditions.